Geeks Who Drink

               When I first saw the commercials for this show I was not interested.  I like trivia, but I don’t particularly care for things that emphasize drinking.  It’s not my thing.  Then by chance I actually saw an episode of Geeks Who Drink because it aired after Face Off.  The show is not what I thought it would be at all.  Any drinking that does happen is minimal.  It is really just a sip here and there, which leaves the majority of the show to some really great trivia.           

                In each episode of Geeks Who Drink there are two teams ready to compete about all things geeky and nerdy.  The teams are made up of one celebrity who leads the team and two people who have immersed themselves in the “geek” world.  Each has their own specialty, but they all engage in questions about books, comic books, TV, movies, and video games.  Some of the questions feel like general knowledge (I say this because maybe I think they are and they really aren’t) while others are definitely more obscure.  Hence why I do so badly in the first round.

                The first round is always a speed round.  Host Zachary Levi reveals two categories and the contestants have to determine which category certain terms belong in.  The categories can pretty much be anything, which is why I don’t do too well in this round.  The terms are also very specific.  Even though I know some about Star Wars and Star Trek, when those were the two categories, with the terms that were given, I hardly knew anything.  The second round is a much better one for me.

                This time, instead of each contestant getting a turn as in the speed round, the team that rings in first is the one that gets to answer the question.  If that team gets it wrong, the other has the opportunity to answer.  Sometimes neither team gets the answer right and the show simply moves on to the next question.  There isn’t any back and forth until someone gets it right.  That happens in the third round.

                The third round is a group activity.  It is usually a matching game, a logic puzzle, or putting things into a timeline.  Each team works together to solve the puzzle and they can keep working no matter how many wrong answers they give until one of the teams gets it right.  Then it’s on to round four.

                Round four is usually pretty short.  Most often it’s a math problem where the contestants have to figure out the components of the problem as well as do the math.  Sometimes I get this one right but not too often.  I don’t feel too badly about this because the contestants get them wrong a lot of times too.  However, when I do get the question correct, I am pretty excited.

                The round after the math has nothing to do with trivia.  Instead the celebrity leads play a bar game to determine who will make all the decisions for the final round.  They are asked to do anything from sliding shot glasses to popping balloons with light sabers.  The winner decides the category for the final round as well as which team will go first.

                It is with the final round that I do the best. Here there is one category and each contestant must name a specific element of that category without repeating an answer or they’re out. The last team with at least one person standing wins. Usually in this round I know a bunch of answers. When the category was about naming men who have won an Academy Award for Best Actor I could have gone on for quite some time. The same would have happened for wizards who appeared in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part II. That, of course, implies the conditions were the same as when I am at home. In front of all those people I might forget my own name, which is what I fear would happen if I ever went on Jeopardy. But one never knows. If I were ever on Geeks Who Drink I may be able to push the audience out of my mind and do very well. It would certainly be fun to try. Whether I will ever get the opportunity to do that or not I don’t know, but I do hope Geeks Who Drink gets a second season.